Pleurothallis orectopus Luer 1977 SUBGENUS Crocodeilanthe [Rchb.f & Warsc.]Luer 1986
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
LATE 
AND AGAIN 
Common Name or Meaning The Stretched Out Foot Pleurothallis [refers to the creeping rhizome]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Pichincha and Imbabura provinces of Ecuador at elevations around 2000 to 3000 meters as a small to medium sized, cold growing, repent epiphyte or terrestrial on roadbanks with ascending to erect, separate not fasciculate, slender ramicauls enveloped by a close, tubular sheath near the middle and 2 to 3 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, acute, cuneate below into the slender petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer and again in the winter on 1 to 2, sublax, subsecund, arising through a slender spathe from an annulus below the abscission layer, 1.6 to 4.4" [4 to 11 cm] long including the .4 to .8" [1 to 2 cm] long peduncle, simultaneously several to many flowered inflorescence with an infundibular, shorter than the ovary floral bract.
"Characterized by the elongated, creeping rhizome, but not long-scandent like P scansor. The long, slender ramicauls are produced .8 to 1.2" [2 to 3 cm] apart. The petiole of the elliptical leaf is elongate. The raceme approximates the length of the leaf. The sepals are pubescent within, the petals are membraneous, obtuse and 3 veined and the lip is obscurely 3 lobed with intramural calli on the anterior margins of the broadly rounded lateral lobes." Luer 1998
Synonyms Crocodeilanthe orectopus (Luer) Luer 2004; Stelis orectopus (Luer) Pridgeon & M.W.Chase 2001
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Selbyana 3(3–4): 356 Luer 1977 drawing fide;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol III Systematics of Pleurothallis Luer 1986;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XVI Systematics of Pleurothallis SUBGEN Crocodeilanthe, Rhynchopera and Talpinaria Luer 1998 drawing fide;
Lindleyana Vol 16 No 4:265 Pridgeon & M.W.Chase 2001 as as Stelis orectopus;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXVI Pleurothallis subgenus Acianthera and Three Allied subgenera, A Second Century of new Species of Stelis of Ecuador, Epibator, Ophidion and Zootrophion Luer 2004 as Crocodeilanthe orectopus
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